


A Hunter Named Agent (and Other Tumblr Prompt Fills)

by stop_the_fading



Category: Supernatural, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Drabbles, Gen, more tags will be added as I get more prompts, prompt fills
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-10-05
Updated: 2013-10-05
Packaged: 2017-12-28 11:40:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/991603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stop_the_fading/pseuds/stop_the_fading
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pretty much does what is says on the tin. A collection of short one-shots done to fill Tumblr prompts. Thus far, only the first one is Avengers-y.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

It’s been a while since Phil has set foot in a hunter bar. It’s not so much a choice as a matter of circumstance - his life has diverged from that old, worn path. He’s been tangled up in other things, different things. He hasn’t missed it, really, because what he does now isn’t so different. It’s still saving people and making a difference, and he can never regret that.

Now circumstance has brought him back here, after so long, and it’s like riding a bicycle, really. It feels a little wrong to be wearing civvies when he’s clearly on a mission, but other than that, it’s almost like he’d only walked away just yesterday.

 

”Phil!” The woman behind the bar smiles at him warmly as he slides onto a bar stool. She’s more worn, less vibrant than he remembers, but he could never fail to recognize her.

”Ellen,” he replies with a smile of his own. “Still running an exemplary establishment, I see.”

”Still working the mild-mannered everyman angle, I see,” she shoots back, and Phil shrugs, because regardless of any training he’s managed to acquire, it’s not an angle so much as exactly what he is.

He doesn’t take the bait, though, leans forward instead and pins Ellen with his most somber gaze.

”I need a little help here, Ellen.”

”You know you’ll always find it here, Phil,” Ellen reminds him, eyes slipping to the side and into the past for a second. “Bill would never forgive me if I turned you away.”

Phil feels that cold little place in his heart reserved for those lost grow a little bit colder. It doesn’t phase him much - he’s used to it by now. It worries him, how used to it he’s become.

Ellen seems to shake herself out of whatever memories clung to her, and slides a bottle of cheap beer across the bar. “What’s your predicament?”

”An agent of mine came up against two hunters a few days ago - young, stubborn, far more skilled than I would have expected given their age. My agent described them as…” Phil lets a wry grin twist his mouth, “I think his words were ‘Cocky and Bullwinkle’.”

Nodding, Ellen stares down at the bar-top as she wipes it down with slow, distracted motions. “I know them,” she hedges.

”I figured.” Taking a long pull from the bottle, Phil sets it down and leans closer. “I don’t mind them knocking Agent Barton around a bit. He could do with a challenge once in a while; he gets irritating when he’s bored.”

Ellen snorts.

”But,” Phil continues before she can open her mouth, “you might want to warn your boys that while Barton found them amusing the first time around, he might not be so patient with them next time.”

”You’re assuming those boys couldn’t take him down if they had to?”

Phil out-and-out smiles at her expression, a mixture of defensive mama bear and bemused curiosity. He slips a bill from his pocket and slaps it down on the counter with a quirk of his eyebrows. “I’m saying that the next time they try to bullshit their way into an intergalactic incident with fake IDs and cheap suits, Barton might not wait for my say-so to shoot them in the foot.”

She laughs, and she nearly looks just like the Ellen he’d known all those years ago, new to motherhood and not yet ground down by the pressure of never knowing if her husband would come home.

”I’m sorry,” Phil says as he stands. “That I wasn’t there.” She doesn’t meet his eyes, but while her smile is sad, it isn’t resentful, and he lets his shoulders relax. “Say hi to Jo for me.”

”I will.”

As the door shuts behind him, muffling the murmured talk of the job and the smell of peanuts and liquor and death, he breathes in deeply and walks away. He’s not sorry he left the life.

It’s probably, he thinks as he slips on his sunglasses, because he’d known that the life would never leave him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From [Honda](http://www.mastermindspookurama.tumblr.com) -
> 
> Prompt: phil coulson as a hunter who comes into contact with the winchesters
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](http://www.frodis-baggins.tumblr.com)...and prompt me!


	2. Chapter 2

    He catches glimpses of them sometimes, when the nagging at the edges of his mind reminds him that for all he’s in Heaven, it just isn’t complete without his boys.  
  
    They’ve grown since he’d last seen the, perched on the edge of ruin at the Devil’s Gate. Hell, between the time he’d sealed the deal and the time he’d clawed his broken and battered soul up from the depths of the Pit, they’d already grown so much. Things had happened to them, things had been done. Deals had been made, and there had been no time for John to tell Dean how proud he was of him, how he wished his mistakes hadn’t bled so perfectly into Dean’s life. No time for him to tell Sam why it was so important that he listen to Dean and stay out of trouble. He hadn’t been able to do anything but leave them again.  
  
    He and Mary look down sometimes, though, when the memory of what was missing pierces the haze of peace that seemed a constant presence, a warm and comforting fog cloaking them from all that had once pained them.  
  
    It’s hard to hurt here. Hard to cry for his lost boys as they struggle and fight and bleed and come out of it alive time and again…more or less. It’s hard to worry for them when all the trappings of mortality have fallen away and he can see, can understand. But sometimes…sometimes he watches Dean shake under the battering fists of self-loathing after days spent trying to drink them away, and he sighs. Sometimes he watches Sam tearing at himself, wretched hatred of his own blood hunching him inward, and he aches. He watches Bobby guide them in ways John had been unable to, remembers the difference between being a Father and being a Dad clearly, and he lets slip a tear or two for all his boys would never have or know or be.  
  
    But then…then there are other times. Times when they leap and dodge obstacles John could never have fathomed. Times when they rise above the petty, pitiful existences of mere men and step into the fray as heroes. Times when the abyss of fear and doubt and rage grasps at them with a million iron fingers, dragging them inexorably closer to darkness, and they take each other’s hands and stand firm, firmer than any God had any right to expect mortals to stand.  
  
    Those times, John smiles and holds Mary close and cries with her, because their boys aren’t simply legends. They aren’t merely great men. They are good. They aren’t always powerful, but they are strong.  
  
    Those times, no father in Heaven or on Earth could be prouder of his sons.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Anon -
> 
> Prompt:A scene where somehow John Winchester gets to see how bad-ass his two sons have become. (like seriously, he was suppose to be the best hunter ever and now Sam and Dean could do the same level of hunting blindfolded...)
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](http://www.frodis-baggins.tumblr.com)...and prompt me!


	3. Chapter 3

    Suddenly, Dean is alone.  
  
    Sammy is still beneath him, corpse already cooling, and Dean pulls his hands away from his brother's nose and mouth. He waits, but there is no intake of breath, no sudden revival. Exactly what he'd wanted.  
  
    Not what he'd wanted at all.  
  
    But there had been no one - no Death to do him a favor, no Cas with a guilty conscience, no last-minute miracle to pull the Winchesters out of the fire just when all had seemed lost. And Dean had waited, until the last minute had long passed and the beat of his heart was a stuttering litany of do it, do it, do it, do it. Until he'd had to accept that if Death wouldn't grant him a favor, he would at least do his damned job.  
  
    Dean hadn't wanted to believe that there was no saving Sammy this time. He'd always...well, no. He hadn't always managed to save Sammy. He'd never managed to save Sammy. Everything he'd ever done to protect his baby brother had only doomed them both further. And this time...this time had been no different.  
  
    Hell had clawed into Sammy again, tearing at his mind suddenly and finally, shredding everything beyond recognition or repair until there was nothing but a twitching, glassy-eyed shell left lying limply in Dean's arms. He'd prayed, prayed with everything he'd had in him, but no one came. There were no angels left to hear him, and God...since when had God ever cared.  
  
    It's almost peaceful, he thinks, his erratic pulse the only sound in the sudden, smothering silence. He pulls Sammy closer and sighs. Maybe this is it, he thinks. Maybe this is their reward, after everything. Not fireworks in empty fields and feeling his mother's arms around him again and reuniting with the loved and lost. Just this - silence and a chance to rest.  
  
    He thinks that perhaps he should be crying, screaming even, something. His baby brother is dead, after all. There's nothing, though. Dean wonders if that's the difference between scrambling to snatch Sammy from his many and varied fates, dragging him back into the world, back into their horror story of an existance, and letting him go. Dean thinks perhaps it was never meant to be about saving Sammy's life. Perhaps it was about saving Sammy from life. He can't very well cry over finally being able to do right by his brother.  
  
    Besides, he thinks as he lays Sammy down gently and lies down beside him, tugging his pistol from his waistband and pressing against the underside of his chin, it's not as though he'll have to carry on without him.  
  
    That...that would have truly been Hell.  
  
    He curls closer around his baby brother and grins as well as he can. "See you soon, Sammy."  
  
    He pulls the trigger.  
  
    Andras looks over his assignments as they lay prone in their beds. Sam had stopped breathing at least half an hour before, and with a sudden jerk, Dean follows him into death. Sighing, the demon rubs out the symbols on the floor between the motel beds with the toe of his sneaker and smiles.  
  
    "And that," he says to no one in particular, "is how that's done."  
  
    With a bit of a skip in his step, he exits the motel room, humming a dirge that's been stuck in his head.  
  
    He does so love it when a job goes right.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> From Charlie [via Skype] -
> 
> Prompt:
> 
> Samhael Arion: I'm having a silly thought pattern now
> 
> Samhael Arion: lemme see if words come
> 
> Samhael Arion: so Sam's all in this nightmare hellworld stupor and, you know, all Buffy Catatonic, Dean's all RAHHH and trying to do things to make it be not so, although I have no idea what just yet, and he's going nuts with grief because he's realizing THERE'S NOTHING HE CAN DO and OMG RAH. The only way to save him (maybe..I unno) he think is to kill Sam. GAHH.[....]
> 
> Me: That...sounds like about five different actual episodes of Supernatural.
> 
> Find me on [Tumblr](http://www.frodis-baggins.tumblr.com)...and prompt me!


End file.
